Penne Vodka

An American invention, you won’t find it
in Italy, as my spouse and I read
in a cookbook my mother made
when I was a child.
Before the salt is in the water,
before the water comes to a boil,
before the penne is put in, you must
make the sauce, first and foremost,
according to the recipe.

Another pointer:
“A cup of vodka and a can of tomato puree
will go a long way;” almost as far
as my mother and her family did
from Orsogna to Astoria, almost as far
as my mother-in-law and her family did
from Dublin to Los Alamos.

My spouse opens the can of puree.
I pour the vodka
into the bowl. We add most
of the remaining ingredients,
including an extra pinch of pepper, to taste,
as the recipe states.

My spouse’s phone rings.
I check mine. Low Battery.
I attach it to its cord and plug it into the wall:
a reverse of my birth,
when the obstetrician disconnected me
from my mother: the beginning of our estrangement,
which peaked by the time I began to shave.

It was only when she got sick
that I began to understand
that no amount of passion or anger
can uproot cancer
as if it were a tree flower, weed
or a family.

This and other recipes are the words
of our reconciliation. I have had to settle
for reading; for whisking my sadness away
in a bowl, and bringing it to a rolling boil
once it is in a pot. I have to wait
to add anything else to the sauce.

My mother in law is on speakerphone:
she and my spouse share a maniacal laugh.
I smile, and look at the pan of olive oil;
their laughter sizzles in slices of garlic, which releases
their pungent perfumes,
the scent of my mother’s most joyous self
ascending in my nose.

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Three Miles South of the Canadian Border

When Ragnarok comes, it will be bleakest winter. Snowstorms will pour forth incessantly, clotty ash engulfing the air. The sun will evaporate, the moon and stars join permanently with darkness. Rivers, lakes, oceans—vast expanses—will densify into sludge. Hills, trees, the entire land will disappear beneath rising snowy heaps. Wild animals, bony, starving, will wander about the whiteness. Domestic animals will perish from bitterest cold and neglect. Shuddering, everyone still alive will wrap themselves inside fireless caves.

When the world ends, it will all take place at the epicenter of all wretchedness, nexus of all misery, and seat of all gloom…three miles south of the Canadian border.

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Check out the poetry blog of Gonzalinho da Costa